Karachi Matric supplementary results 2009

BSEK announced SSC-II supplementary results
Karachi, Dec 24: Results for the SSC Part-II (Class X) Supplementary Examination
2009, Science and General Group (Regular and Private), were announced on
Wednesday by the Board of Secondary Education Karachi (BSEK).

BSEK
Controller of Examinations Kalim Asghar Kirmani said that as many as 16,880
candidates registered for the supplementary examinations in the Science group,
while 16,285 candidates appeared; 10, 104 people (62.04 per cent) cleared the
exams.

FUUAST announced date of admission test-2010
Karachi: The admission test-2010 for D.Pharm, BS and M.Sc Computer Science, and BS and
MBA Business Administration at the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science
& Technology (FUUAST) will be conducted on January 3, 2010, the registrar
has announced.Admit cards can be downloaded from the National Testing Service
(NTS) website. The news

Schools warned against charging security fee
Karachi: The Sindh education department's directorate of private
educational institutions has warned private schools of stern action under the
schools' registration act if students are charged any fee under the head of
security.

Taking strong exception to reports that some private schools
as part of security measures are charging between Rs300 and Rs500 from their
students for installing walkthrough gates and cameras in their respective
institutions, Sindh Education Minister Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq has reportedly asked
the provincial directorate of private institutions to immediately submit a
detailed report to him about all those schools which were demanding funds from
their students to provide security at their institutions.

The provincial
director of private educational institutions, Mansoob Hussain Siddiqui, said
that the matter had already been referred to monitoring teams. He said they
had started conducting inspections of schools on the basis of complaints they
had received from students and their parents about the demand for funds in the
name of security. Following the inspections, the teams would submit their
reports to the directorate and action would be taken against schools
accordingly. Besides, the teams would also identify the schools which had failed
to take effective security measures so far, he said, adding that action would be
taken against such schools under the private educational institutes registration
act.

Mr Siddiqui advised parents of schoolchildren to file written
complaints at the private institutions directorate against the schools which are
demanding fee under the head of security.

"Private schools can neither
demand 'annual charges' nor any other fee in the name of donations and if a
school is compelling its students to make payment under these heads, their
parents must bring these violations into the notice of the directorate so that
such schools can be taken to task," he said. He further said that private
schools could not charge any fee except monthly tuition and admission fees. Dawn

High prices of books
Karachi: The government is yet to make serious efforts towards lowering
the prices of books, despite having made tall claims in this regard.

High
prices of books are a matter of concern for students and booklovers in general,
and Federal Education Minister Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani had claimed during the
Karachi Internal Book Fair (KIBF) in 2008 and 2009 that the government was keen
to lower the prices of books, and enable low-income groups to enjoy the pleasure
of reading. No efforts have been made, however, towards the materialisation of
these lofty promises.

Pakistan Publishers and Booksellers Association
(PPBA) Chairman Khalid Aziz said that if the government really wanted
to improve the situation, it would have lowered the import duty on printing
paper. "The government has banned the import of paper to protect the local paper
industry. This is fine, but the problem is that local manufacturers - three in
Punjab and one in Karachi - are unable to provide the required quantity of paper
to the publishers. They monopolise the paper trade, and sell their products at
exorbitant prices," Aziz said, adding that this was a paradox.

Moreover,
the absence of competition has also led to the production of low-quality paper,
which is sold at inflated prices. The government claims to want educate the
people of Pakistan, but people cannot be educated if books are out of reach of
the low-income and even middle-income groups, Aziz maintained.

Paper
issues notwithstanding, other basic tools of the trade, such as chemicals,
equipment and ink, are also burdened with taxes, which in turn pull up the
prices of books. "No less than 50 per cent of the actual selling price of the
book actually goes towards paying a whole bevy of taxes, including sales tax and
income tax," Aziz said. "If the government continues to do this, publishers will
have to go to India to get their books printed. It is a gloomy
scenario."

Welcome Book Port (Pvt) Ltd owner Syed Asghar Zaidi also
refuted the general perception that publishers mint money by selling books at
high prices. "Contrary to what many people think, we are not devouring fat
profits. Raw material for printing a book is expensive and the government levies
14 to 15 per cent tax on paper. It is the government that should take concrete
steps to lower the prices of books. Without that, all claims made by officials
are shallow, and cannot change the situation," he said.

Mona Shahid, a
third year engineering student at the NED University of Engineering &
Technology, and an avid book reader, also criticised the government. She further
said that the reason for the high prices of books was the low demand for reading
material. "People who love to read fiction, biographies, poetry and other books
are few. This means that books are published in small numbers, thus catapulting
prices," she said.

Course textbooks are relatively cheap, but the quality
of paper that they are printed on is very poor, Shahid said. She smiled,
however, and added that at the end of the day, the responsibility for the entire
situation lies on the government.

On the other hand, a former chairman of
the University of Karachi (KU) Department of Mass Communication said
that publishers are equally responsible for the high prices of books. "Look at
this way. The government is charging taxes, but what about the hefty profit
pocketed by the publishers? They are getting 15 per cent profit on
course-related books and 33 to 40 per cent on other books. They should act
responsibly and lower their profits. Without this, their claims are not valid
either," he said.

KU Patch-Clamp workshop
Karachi: Dr Andrew Moorhouse has travelled a long way to attend the
Patch-Clamp workshop at the University of Karachi (KU). He said that
when he left his home in Sydney (Australia) for his first ever visit to Karachi,
he was apprehensive and concerned about the security situation in the city, but
added that he could not have been more wrong.

"It was a complete surprise
for me. The colourful buses and the buzz of a whole variety of sounds captivated
me. It was like coming to a lively drama where things were moving fast, with
lots of people milling around. The warmth oozing from these people, however, was
astonishing. I can only say that I am attracted by the Pakistani charm on my
first visit and hope to come again," he said.

Dr Moorhouse has a PhD from
Sydney University and is currently teaching at the University of New South
Wales, Sydney. He is an expert on Patch-clamp Techniques and has taught at
Oxford University, UK, and the National Institute of Physiological Research in
Okazaki, Japan.

"This workshop is a good opportunity for Pakistani
students to gain experience in the technique. It will allow them to work
independently and train others. I am pleased with the level of intelligence
among the students here. I had not expected such academic excellence," he
said.

Dr Moorhouse's research deals with ion channels that underlay the
processes of neurotransmission and olfaction. "Both involve the use of the
patch-clamp technique to directly record currents flowing through individual
protein-channels, in order to investigate their channel properties," he
explained. "We also utilise site-directed mutagenesis to modify the molecular
structure of those channels and to determine how their structure relates to
their cellular and physiological function."

He has also worked with Nobel
laureates Bert Sakmann and Erwin Neher who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine in 1991 for their discoveries concerning the function of single ion
channels in cells.

Speaking on the occasion, Vice
Chancellor DUHS Dr Masood Hameed said that the number of enrollments in medical
and dental colleges was increasing by the minute and in such a scenario there
was an added burden of appointing professional teaching staff as well as pooling
proper resources (by hospitals).

Dr Saleem Ilyas, Director Professional
Development Centre, DUHS, said that the MPHE course was going to bring a
paradigm shift for the undergraduate students. The news